Nancy Boy
by 123serendipitee
Summary: Nick can't figure out how to use his new Fancy Man phone any better than he can figure out his life, at the moment.
1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note: Warning: Now entering the possibly LEAST 'shippy portion of season one! My job, as your humble little reporter, is to relay all the good shippy stuff that DOESN'T happen onscreen...but what with Jess dating Russell (at Nick's urging!) and Nick, uh, VICARIOUSLY dating Russell...and then boinking a bunch of college girls...and then (SHUDDERRRR!) getting back together with Caroline...well, how is one little canon-loving fanfic writer supposed to make any ('shippy) sense of it all?!**

**Even Jake Johnson, in interviews, kinda expressed confusion about who his character was and what the HECK was sometimes going on in his head during this time. His personal conclusion was that Nick was in the middle of having a nervous breakdown. And since I'm Jake Johnson's bitch (and since it's the only way to make any sense of his character deterioration, even all shippiness aside :op) this is the interpretation I chose to roll with, as well. ;o)**

**Ya'll know I'm an angst-ho, so I completely intended to end this story after chapter three. I was just fine with that, and in fact, it gave my angst-loving heart a lovely little thrill. However, in the end I felt like those of you who have been loyally following my canon-limited stories deserved a little more than that, and so I decided to give you a cookie with chapter 4. And OKAY, so maybe I ended up really enjoying the cookie too! ;o)**

* * *

Nick was opening the door to their apartment building when he heard a familiar noise. It somehow simultaneously set his teeth on edge and made his heart jump a little bit, but he didn't have time to analyze that dichotomy before Jess gave her bicycle bell another enthusiastic series of rings, yelling, "Hold the door, Miller!"

He turned to see her pulling up on her retro-style bike, and shook his head at the picture she made. The basket on her handlebars was full of books, and her long ponytail was curling over one shoulder just-so. She was wearing one of those dresses that made her look like a 1950's pin-up...completely, sweetly, wholesome and innocent...just waiting for a gust of wind or an altercation with a wayward dog to accidentally reveal shapely thighs and lacy panties.

She looked absolutely, perfectly, impractically, greeting-card-style adorable, and he couldn't help but point it out:

"Jess, you look like an extra from one of those creepy movies where your car breaks down in a small town where everyone is so friendly and happy, and it all feels like a perfect little slice out of time...until you look around and realize that _no one ever blinks_..."

"Why thank you, Nick!" She smiled gaily up at him, blithely choosing to take that as a compliment as she started to wheel her bike past him.

"Hey, Jess!" A voice that would forever make Nick's blood run cold interrupted them, and Jess turned to respond.

"HEY, Remy! I got your book!" She fished around in her basket, and finally found what she was looking for. Nick looked on menacingly as she handed a beaten-up looking hardback to their sketchy landlord.

"I appreciate it!" Remy was saying, holding up the book as he added, "You'll be the first one to know how it turns out!"

"I'm counting on it!" Jess warbled, and continued pushing her bike into the building.

Nick barely waited until the door closed behind them, before erupting.

"YOU'VE BEEN TALKING TO REMY AGAIN?!"

"Nick, it's no big deal, seriously, he's a nice guy! He's just a little...different! That's all!"

He threw his hands up in silent frustration, not even willing to restart that whole argument with her, and choosing instead to focus on the newest development: "So you're picking up books from the library for him now?!"

"He doesn't have a library card!" she said, as if that explained it all and made it perfectly reasonable. But just in case, she elaborated in his defense, "He tries to leave as small a personal paper trail behind him as possible. He's very concerned about the carbon footprint that he leaves on the world."

"He's very concerned about the FBI tracking down his where-abouts," Nick muttered, and Jess couldn't really argue with him. "What kind of book did he want you to get him, '25 Ways to Tan the Hide of the Human Animal'?"

"FOR YOUR INFORMATION, Mr. Cynic, Remy is interested in taking up the art of macrame!"

"He wants to polish up on his elaborate knot-tying skills?! Yeah, that's not creepy at all, Jess!"

"OH Nick," she brushed him off.

"And what the hell does 'You'll be the first to know how it turns out' mean?! Tell me that _doesn't_ sound like he's weaving your name into the intricate bondage system that he's creating for his underground sex lair!"

"OOOO, like 'Charlotte's Web'!"

"I'm serious, Jess, I am FORBIDDING you to speak to this guy alone, again!"

"OH!" her chipper facade slipped a bit as she betrayed herself with a slight shudder, "I never go see him alone! I always take Cece with me!"

Nick groaned at the thought of the kind of menaging fantasies that Jess and Cece TOGETHER had to be putting into Remy's head. He almost opened his mouth to protest, but on second thought, the memory of what a barracuda Cece could be if needed came to mind, and he reconsidered that she could probably do as good a job of protecting Jess from Remy as anyone.

They were entering the elevator now, and as he pushed the button for their floor Jess cocked her head coyly, considering him with silent humor.

"What?!"

"You FORBID me, huh?!" she teased, poking him in the side, before continuing in a sultry voice even lower and huskier than usual, "How very...DOMINANT of you, Nick. Have I been a bad little girl again, Daddy?"

"Haha, very funny..."

"Am I going to be disciplined when we get upstairs?"

She was double poking him now, and he batted at her hands as he pulled away, "Knock it off..."

"Please Daddy, don't spank me, I promise I'll be good..." She delivered this plea seductively, while mock-cozying up to him for extra-effect.

"OH MY GOD, JESS!" was all he could say, and mercifully the elevator doors slid open and she pushed her bike out, laughing blithely.

He pulled a hand down his face as he watched her retreat, her pony tail swinging gaily down the back of her innocent little frock, realizing she had no idea that she'd just created a whole new fantasy to torment him as he tossed sleeplessly across the hall from her each night.

He didn't even realize that the doors had closed without him ever getting off the elevator, until he was halfway back down again.


	2. Chapter 2

He was somehow back in his car, driving aimlessly, blindly, when Jess texted him, "What happened to you?!"

And since that was such a very, very good question, he didn't answer her at all.

_What __**had **__happened to him? _That was the question crawling under his skin every waking hour of the day lately, and the more he thought about it, the further out of reach the answer seemed to float.

The easy answer would be, "Julia gave me a cactus." If he thought back, the moment that she handed him that damned DOOMED plant was the moment he'd felt himself begin to unravel inside.

But if he was honest, he knew that in fact this...this...WHATEVER this was...had been simmering inside him, just waiting to come to a boil, for a lot longer than that.

Hell, maybe since he was a damn kid, for that matter.

Jess was texting him again: "PLEASE TELL ME YOU'RE NOT DOWN THERE WITH REMY!"

He sniffed humorlessly, and started to try to answer and reassure her, but decided it wasn't worth killing himself; he was in the middle of traffic, and still hadn't figured out that damn phone.

The Fancy Man phone.

He weighed it in his hand and glanced down at it with dispassionate eyes. That phone made him feel like a 16 year old kid with a high-priced call girl. Yes, he was overwhelmingly attracted to it, but he had no idea what to do with it. He felt way out of his depth, and for the life of him, couldn't even begin to untangle its mysteries.

It was a MAN'S phone. A FANCY man's phone.

And he wasn't a Fancy Man.

Hell, he was more of a damn Nancy Boy, these days. And when the hell had that happened? When had he turned into this sniveling, emasculated, mewling, aimless, FRIGHTENED kid of a man?

He could hear his dad's voice in his head, harsh and unmerciful: "MAN-UP, Nancy!"

Heh. _Man-up_, indeed. Nick reflected that somehow, somewhere down the line, he'd gone and turned into just the kind of guy he himself liked to make relentless fun of. But somehow, he just couldn't manage to fight his way back up out of this rut.

Still, he had to give himself credit...he'd been doing a pretty good job hiding it.

_It. _

This nervous breakdown that he was convinced he was in the middle of having.

Hell, none of his roommates seemed a bit aware of the ugly storm that had been brewing in him lately, not even Jess, whose nosy emotional radar where he was concerned was usually so accurate that he couldn't have so much as a hangnail without her getting all up in his grill about it.

Then again, she _had _vowed to "stop caring so much" about him, and Nick sighed, realizing that, largely, she'd been successful. Oh, she was still "there" for him, as a friend, sure...but after that night on the beach she had determined, more for herself than for him, to establish a more healthy sense of distance in their relationship.

Namely, to start minding her own damn business.

Which might look good on paper, but come to find out, it wasn't quite the dream come true that Nick might have imagined. Turns out he kinda missed having her trying to be his boss, his mother, his big sister (and maybe kinda, in a weird way, his WIFE) all wrapped up in one cutely pesky polka-dotted package. As annoying as she could be, deep down it was always just nice to feel..._cared about_.

His phone rang, and he studiously ignored it, not even acknowledging that in all likelihood he was ignoring a worried call from Jess** _because _**he was too busy sulking over the fact that she didn't seem to worry about him as much anymore. No, the irony of that was completely lost on him, because he was moving on to the next point of his quickly deepening sulk, which was that:

...hell, he might have thought that at least Schmidt or Winston would notice the spiral he was in...after all, they'd seen it before. But maybe that was the point, he thought with another sigh...maybe hovering on the edge of a perpetual nervous breakdown was so _normal _for him that it didn't even raise an eyebrow anymore.

And Nick had to admit, he supposed, that it was true...that just underneath his seemingly solid, stolid exterior, he'd always actually been a tad...shall we say..."high-strung".

He ignored a few more calls, but checked his phone when he got another text alert:

_"ANSWER YOUR PHONE, Miller!"_

He didn't.

He'd been sitting in the parking lot of his favorite batting cages for at least fifteen minutes, just staring blankly into the falling dusk like some kinda nut job. And he sat there at least five more, just listening to his phone ring...over and over. But when the halogen lights over the cages clicked on, something clicked inside him as well, and he popped his trunk and yanked his car door open with a sudden sense of purpose.


	3. Chapter 3

Nick removed the baseball bat from his trunk, and weighed its old familiar heft in his hands thoughtfully. A gift from his favorite uncle when he was 13 years old, it had quickly become his "lucky" bat. He'd swung it more times than he supposed it was even possible to guess over the next decade of his life.

But after that...what had happened? Why had he gradually stopped playing ball? What had replaced that passion? Again, he couldn't even remember. Law school, maybe. Girls, he supposed. _Beer_, he absolutely refused to admit. He did recall, in only the fuzziest of detail, that the last time he'd held that bat in his hands he'd been drunkenly threatening some douche outside a bar who he thought had looked at Caroline the wrong way. It had taken both Schmidt and Coach to wrestle it away from him and stuff him back in the car.

He gave it a trial swing now, wincing at the pang that he sometimes still felt in his back from Jess's ill-fated flying tackle. He twisted experimentally at the waist a few times to loosen up, and then headed towards the cages with grim determination.

A dad and young son were wrapping things up and leaving as he walked in, and he nodded at them, declining to explore the painful twinge the image sent to his heart. Instead he chose to focus, while feeding a couple of wrinkled bills into the token machine, on being grateful that now he was the only one there at that time of night.

He wasn't in the mood for small talk.

Just in case, he chose the cage the furthest from the entrance, and slipped the tokens into the coin box, choosing a slow pitch speed to warm up with.

He stepped into position, took and released one deep breath, and mentally recited the earliest sports mantra that every boy learns_:_

Keep your eye on the ball.

His first swing was horribly rusty, which was to be expected. His second was a little better. By the fourth or fifth he was finding his groove. And as his body slipped into familiar old patterns, his mind was freed to return once again to his earlier ponderings.

And sure, rehashing, for the millionth time, the failures and frustrations currently dogging his rather pathetic existence was certainly nothing new. However, Nick soon fell into a rhythm of thought and action that, to be honest, felt pretty damn therapeutic:

_Law school._

He concentrated on the position of his body when the ball crossed the plate...

_Caroline._

He monitored getting his front foot down, making sure his front side didn't leak forward...

"_All I'm hearing is that I can't use my bathroom because you're poor."_

...until he felt ready to kick the pitch speed up a notch.

_"You CHOSE to be a bartender...You CHOSE to drop out of law school..."_

He watched his balls roll down the slanted floor towards the pitching machine...

_He was 30 years old and his most significant accomplishment in life was the invention of Bro-Juice..._

...watched the conveyor belt collect the balls and filter them back to be re-pitched...`

_"Julia sent me a cactus...I'm not an idiot...she's going to break up with me..."_

...watched the ball fall into place behind the pneumatic wheels...

_"I get it...message received...I'm the cactus..."_

...and upped the speed again.

_"I don't have insurance...I really can't afford an ultra-sound..."_  
_"...I'm the guy on the beach holding the wallets."_

At first, the new challenge was rather exhilarating...

_"I was so hammered last night, I don't remember a thing."  
"Sorry I forgot my wallet...thanks for paying..."_

...but soon, the balls were coming almost faster than he could prepare for...  
_  
"The subject of this talk is the debt of money between us..."  
__"You've been at the bottom of the socio-economic ladder for the past 15 years..."_  
  
...and what had been a friendly game now felt like a personal attack_,_ as ball after ball came viciously hurling his way._  
_

___"I was just checking your credit score, and got this number that was crazily low..."  
"I've been doing this a long time, and I've never SEEN a score this low..."  
"Did you just wake up from a coma?!"_

He got lucky and hit a beautiful line drive down the middle, and it hit the pitching machine with a satisfying thud. Nick gloated over his metallic enemy, choosing to ignore the fact it was his own choices that had accelerated things to this point.

___"You have the credit score of a homeless ghost..."_  


By now Nick had dropped any pretense of technique, and was basically just trying to kill every ball that came his way, as the voices in his head came faster and faster, refusing to take turns now, over-lapping, all out of order, each trying to out-shout the next:

_"Nicholas, your father and I are so disappointed..."  
"I never even knew you cared about me until I broke up with you..."  
"I'm going to die alone..."  
"I think we should break up...I don't think we should do this anymore..."  
"You're just some loser-"_

"You're just some LOSER-"

_"YOU'RE JUST SOME LOSER!"_

and finally, his own voice ringing over them all:

**_"He likes you Jess...go back in there...I think it would be good for you..."_**

That swing was erratic, misguided. The result was a hard foul, and he winced as he watched the ball bounce off the far left net. He definitely needed a do-over on that one.

_"Come on Miller...MAN-UP, Nancy...don't swing too early...don't swing too late...you can do this..."_

He squared up with the pitching machine, dug in with his back foot, used every ounce of muscle memory he could summon to recall the perfect swing, and prepared to aim for the fence.

But the pitch never came.

His time was up.

There would be no second chance.

And suddenly, surreally, all the voices in his head went silent, save for one...and strangely, it belonged to a certain Paul Genslinger:

**_"I actually feel kinda sorry for you...because at this point in your life, I know that you'll never dislike me more than you dislike yourself."_**

Laugh or cry. Those were his options at that point. And so, Nick chose laughter. He flung his "lucky" bat as hard and as far as he could towards the back net, laughing rather hysterically as he watched it spiral, end over end, through the air, and wondering when the hell he'd committed the rookie mistake of taking his eye off the ball.


	4. Chapter 4

By the time Nick got back to the loft he was hurting with muscles he'd forgotten his body even possessed, and his hand trembled slightly as he tried to fit his key in the door. The batting cages had at least served the purpose of exhausting him, he reflected. Bone weary in body and mind, he only wanted to get a cold beer and a badly needed shower, before collapsing in bed. Maybe his sleep would at least be dreamless that night.

But his shaky fumbling at the lock was cut short by Jess snatching the door open for him, and for some reason, as beaten-down as he was feeling, something in his spirit immediately turned up at the edges.

Which really made no sense, because she was pissed.

_**PIIIIIIIIIIISSED. **_

More pissed than he'd ever seen her.

Her fists were on her flannel-clad hips, she looked suspiciously like she might have been crying, and her hair was hanging loose and flying around her in a crazy aura of ire. The phrase "madder than a wet hen" popped into his head, and it's aptness nearly made him smile. But he didn't. The last thing he wanted to do was make her MORE pissed.

Because she was_ really _pissed.

_**"NICK MILLER, where the HELL have you been?"**_

Pissed enough to cuss, and Jess never cussed.

"I had some stuff I needed to think about and..."

"_I WAS WORRIED SICK ABOUT YOU! _I was afraid you'd gone down to talk to Remy, and I couldn't get Winston or Schmidt to take me seriously, and you wouldn't answer me, and..."

"Hey, HEY!" Nick said gently, grabbing her by the shoulders. A few tears did escape the corners of her irate eyes, but she dashed them away angrily, so he lowered his hands and acted like he didn't see them. "You didn't go down there, did you?"

"Down where?"

"Remy's basement!"

"NOOOO," she wailed forlornly, and angrily, and rather desperately, "_YOU TOLD ME NOT TOOOOOO!_"

He hid another little smile at that, and started to lie, "I'm sorry, I still haven't figured out my new phone, and..."

"Don't you DARE hand me that kind of line, Miller!" She was poking him hard in the chest now, and it kinda hurt. "You were ignoring me all night and you know it!"

"Okay...well...Jess...I just...I was just blowing off some steam. Had a lot on my mind."

"Oh, BLOWING OFF STEAM," she waved her hands around as she ranted sarcastically, "Is that what we're calling it now?!"

But then she suddenly stilled, seeming to realize for the first time that he did not, in fact, reek of alcohol. He watched her continue to eye him assessively, taking note of the fact that, other than being pretty sweaty, slightly gritty, and very tired, he appeared to be all in one piece. And a little of the anger seemed to drain out of her, her shoulders visibly relaxing as she lost her head of steam and fumbled verbally, "Ok...well...but don't _DO _that to me again, ok?!"

Funny how the very fact that she was so upset had somehow, perversely, cheered him up. He felt so much better, in fact, that he couldn't resist poking a little fun at her: "What happened to not caring so much about me anymore, Jessica?!"

"OHHH," her temper flared again, and she stomped a muted stomp with a slippered foot before throwing up her hands, turning on her heel, and heading towards her room, "_GO TO HELL_, Nick."

He almost had time to regret the impulsiveness of his gentle teasing before she stopped short and merely stood with her back to him for several seconds. And then her head dropped, her shoulders drooped, and she did an about-face. Her wild hair hung forward and almost hid her pout as she shuffle-marched back over to him and merely leaned against him for a second or two, straight-armed, like a recalcitrant child begging to be hugged.

And then suddenly her last vestiges of stubbornness melted away as she laid her head on his chest, and wrapped her arms tightly around his waist, whispering in that little-girl voice that he always found so irresistible, "I don't want to fight with you anymore."

For a few seconds his hands just hovered around her back and shoulders, not knowing what to do or where to rest. But then they finally seemed to move of their own volition, and when they did, they unerringly wrapped her up, suddenly seeming to know exactly how best to mold themselves around her angles and curves.

"I don't want to fight with you anymore either, baby girl" he murmured huskily, ignoring the fact that technically, he wasn't the one who had been doing the fighting. Debating that point seemed a little trivial in light of the fact that his cheek was now unhesitatingly finding its home on the top of her head.

"I promise I'll try...I'll try...not to worry about you. Much." Her whisper came back muffled, and he could feel her hot, moist breath through his shirt where her messy head was buried in his chest. But he was more focused on what she wasn't saying, but what he could hear in her voice: the awareness that Something Not Good was going on with him. Something Worth Worrying About. And feeling SEEN (by HER) that way did more to loosen the tight screw of tension that had been twisting in his head than the entire night at the batting cage had.

He smiled grimly and resisted the urge to move his mouth the scant inch it would take to press a kiss into her hair. "Someone needs to worry about me," he confessed.

"Ok...well_...just don't do something like that again_..." she repeated herself aimlessly.

"I'm sorry, Jess. That I didn't answer my phone. I was just in a bad head-space."

"Ok...well..._**OK**_..." She'd pulled away from him, and was punching him in the stomach with soft and awkward hits that barely landed.

He slid his hands down her arms and grabbed those tiny, balled, embarrassed fists and raised them, leaning forward and forcing her to look him in the eyes for the first time.

And as her uneasy gaze skittered away from his and back again, he found that there was so much he wanted to say to her that there was no way he could even begin to say any of it. So he just took in her beautiful, red, swollen, slightly snotty nose, and those gorgeous blood-shot eyes with their wet and tangled lashes, and told her with a little smile, "You look like crap."

And she punched him in the chest for kinda realz this time, laughing a little at her own misery while hiccuping defensively, "_It's all your fault!_" But in the next second she was slipping away from him, more sure of herself now, a little of her customary sass and frass back in place as she sashayed off to bed. "By the way Nicholas, I don't know what_ you've_ been doing, but you smell like an old dirty-gym-socks-wearing goat."

He took a whiff of an underarm, and had to turtle-face in agreement with her. Then it occurred to him that there he'd been, holding her in his arms, the girl (literally) of his dreams...and he hadn't had a single sexual thought about it at all.

He'd been too busy thinking about how right it had felt, and about how somehow that tiny little wisp of a girl always had the ability to beat his demons into submission, and about how her arms around him had made him feel braver and stronger than he could remember feeling in a long, long time.

Heck, he realized, past the chastest of impulses he hadn't even had the urge to kiss her while he almost certainly (he knew intuitively) could have.

_You really __**are**__ a Nancy Boy aren't you, Miller, _he sniffed at himself.

But somehow, as he headed off to clean up, he couldn't be too mad at himself about it.

In fact, in a rather spectacular change of mood...a pendulum that had been on the up-swing ever since Jess had yanked open the door and cussed him out...he now found himself unable to keep a silly little smile off his face. He'd forgotten all about that beer he was supposed to have, and even found himself having to resist the urge to start singing, as he turned the knobs in the shower.

He reflected on these surreal matters thoughtfully as he stood there waiting for the temperature to get just right before jumping in, and contemplated that maybe he really was losing his sanity.

But then again, maybe...just maybe...he was on his way to finally finding it.


End file.
